


Breaking Silence, Breaking Grey

by foundCarcosa



Category: Norse Mythology
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-03
Updated: 2012-07-03
Packaged: 2017-11-09 02:53:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/450463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An apathetic and forgotten Guardian makes an unlikely companion in an endearingly awkward lad from far-off Jotunheim.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breaking Silence, Breaking Grey

**I.**

At some point, they stopped speaking his name.

All of their names. The names were lost on these new Danes and Swedes and Nords. They did not spill sweet, sweet drink upon hallowed ground in exultation. They did not raise horns of the same in honour of their beloveds. They did not tell their children tales of Odin’s grand hall, of the Thunderer’s adventures, of the fearsome giants of fire and ice and how the aesir triumphed again and again…

Heimdall had never been an oft-invoked name. The Bright One was a silent enigma, one whose tales had been long-lost and never completely recovered, despite the valiant attempts of humans who made the past their livelihood. As centuries passed and the wheels of the cosmos turned, the names began to resurface again — Odin, All-Father. Thor, Thunderer. Frey and Freya. Balder. The Norns. Loki.

But if they spoke his name with these others, Heimdall did not hear.

The wheels of the cosmos turned, and greyness began to creep into the corners of his vision. He saw as keenly as always, but the nuances of colour and depth and vibrance were slowly lost. The glory of the cosmos faded, and Bifrost was naught but a lonesome stretch of enchanted glass.

His unblinking eyes shone as vividly as ever, but that vividness was glassy, false.

The Guardian stood, as vigilant as always, but he was not there. 

**II.**

He almost did not see the shadow. Almost, because it blended in with the mute greys and blacks of everything in the Guardian’s vision.

His existential dysphoria did not prevent him from noticing when something around him was out of place. It simply dulled his reflexes, made him slow to react. The shadow-thing had nearly crossed Bifrost by the time Heimdall stepped out in front of it.

“Halt.” His heavy voice, rough-edged from disuse, was slow in coming. It was forced from his chest unwillingly. “Show yourself.”

For a sickening moment, a tendril of fear licked at his gut — the shadow was dissipating, revealing tough, bluish flesh. But the figure was small, smaller than Heimdall and much smaller than every other resident of Jotunheim he had met.

“Sorry, I… thought there’d be more of you,” the lad spoke, with a quick, unsure grin. He was unmistakably jotunn — his eyes, if anything, gave him away. But Heimdall knew, in the way that he knew things, that this one meant Asgard, and him, no harm.

“This bridge, I… couldn’t resist, you know? On Midgard, they have this mountain, and people just… get this _urge_ , to climb it, even though they… invariably die doing so, but never mind that. The Bifrost, it’s like that mountain! Even if I got killed, I _had_ to!”

Nonplussed, Heimdall simply stared. The flash of colour that his surprise visitor had brought wasn’t fading. His eyes were still crimson. His hair was still sleek and dark, like a river otter's fur. Red eyes, dark hair, bluish flesh, a lighthouse beacon over a still grey sea.

“Why?”

The jotunn lad spluttered. “Wh- What do you _mean_ , why? Have you _looked_ at it? It’s _beautiful!”_  
As Heimdall continued to stare blankly at him, his incredulous gaze deepened into something else — confusion, and then something kind of like chagrin. He closed the distance between them, and Heimdall drew back — but he was taken by the arm with an easy familiarity that stunned him into remaining still.  
The jotunn boy stood beside him and pointed with his free hand.

“ _Look.”_

“I see.”

“No. Well, I mean, you _do_ , of course, but…” Haltingly, he tried to explain. “It’s… it’s a rainbow, you know? Colours merging into each other, making a… oh, I don’t know the _words,_ but… I know you saw it once, you _had_ to have seen it once…”

The grey had set in deep, and would not be shaken. Heimdall shook his head, slowly, ruefully. The jotunn lad sighed in defeat, and the depth of Heimdall’s isolation squeezed like a vise around his chest.

“Hey, uh… by any chance, do you have anything to eat? It’s just… that bridge, it sure is long…”

**III.**

The Guardian did not keep food, because he did not eat it. It had lost its taste long ago, shortly after he stopped dining at the hall with the others.

But the jotunn boy — _Vetr_ — stayed anyway, and stayed long.  
He did not mind Heimdall’s slow, ponderous manner of moving and speaking, or his lack of things to speak about, or even the fact that he was aesir. He found interest in everything — the fact that Heimdall’s home needed no walls, but still evoked a sense of privacy, for example.  
The Guardian had simply not noticed.

“Don’t you like _anything?”_ Vetr had finally asked, with more than a touch of exasperation, and Heimdall had merely lowered his gaze, not quite understanding. His sluggish heart stuttered in surprise when the jotunn impulsively hugged him.

**IV.**

The sky lightened, and Vetr, nestled in the hunched bulk of Heimdall’s seated body, pointed out the colours as they came into view. Heimdall thought he could see one or two of them, but it may have been wishful thinking.

“Gosh, I’m sorry you can’t see any of these… I’d show all of them to you if I could, but, you know, I’m just a scrawny boy from that terrible place you’re supposed to hate. You’re not even supposed to be talking to me. I’m not even supposed to be talking to _you._ I don’t know what I was thinking. You probably want me to go, don’t y—”

Heimdall closed his eyes when he heeded his sudden, inexplicable urge, cutting off Vetr's barrage of uncertainty with a kiss — something seen many times by the Guardian, but never done.  
He didn’t know why he closed his eyes first; it was not something he’d learnt, or even considered.  
But when he opened them again, he inhaled sharply and drew back as if avoiding a blow.

Sól was awake, and the world — not just Vetr's eyes or his hair or his flesh, but the _world,_ all of it — was awash with colour.


End file.
